


Imaginary Friends

by ShadowThorne



Category: Bleach
Genre: Dreams, Hallucinations, Horror, M/M, Paranormal, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-05-26 00:58:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6217231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowThorne/pseuds/ShadowThorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a rocky start, bouncing from home to home, Grimmjow's finally found a place to settle down where he can at least get through school. Alas, it's far from perfect. Trapped between his own troubles, real and imagined, and the toxic surroundings, pressure builds, so he turns inward to find some sort of comfort. Unfortunately, his inner mind is nothing but turmoil as well. GrimmIchi. </p>
<p>WARNINGS: This will not be a happy story. There is no major character death, but there is minor character death, as well as plenty of eluded to and written violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**_Hypnagogia - the experience of the transitional states to and from sleep; the state between wakefulness and sleeping._ **

 

 

 

The neighborhood was nice, kind of uppity. It was one of those places where all the houses looked almost exactly the same and white picket fences lined the drives. The shrubbery and landscaping was neat, clean and well maintained. Mailboxes announced addresses near the streets and either a special keycard or express permission was needed to enter the edition. Before filling out an application to take over the lease of one of the houses, the potential members of the community had to prove their pay grade was high enough. When parked, the cars of visitors and residents were expected to be kept off the streets, either in the garage or driveway. They all had to be clean, rust-free and beyond average.

Upon entering the expensive housing edition, if you pulled through the main gates where a doorman of sorts monitored local traffic and kept watch for anything unsavory, a winding road lined with intricately decorated street lamps snaked clear around the neighborhood. Turning right on the second to last side street, a quiet little house sat clear at the end of the drive.

Like all the others, the front was made of brick and the driveway was paved. The lawn was well taken care of and green. The siding and brick was clean, the windows immaculate. It looked no different from all the others in this particular edition.

But looks could be deceiving.

The house wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t small either. It was warm, the interior decorated invitingly with welcoming colors and clean appliances. Thick, plush carpet and well maintained, expensive furniture made for a comfortable atmosphere. A man sat on the couch, a beer in hand as he propped his feet up on the wood-framed, glass coffee table before him. A tie hung loose around his neck and the button up he wore was wrinkled. On the flat screen hanging on the wall he faced, a football game played, the whistles from the referees and screams of fans permeating the otherwise quiet room.

Those sounds drifted through the speakers of the surround sound and into the kitchen, where a younger man stood quietly, a baking spatula in hand. Baking, or cooking in general, wasn’t exactly something he did on a regular basis, but it wasn’t hard to follow the directions on the box and it just so happened that today was a special occasion. Kind of.

The tile was smooth and clean beneath his bare feet. The window above the sink to his right let the slowly fading rays of evening light bathe the room in a golden glow. Freshly baked, the sweet smells of chocolate cake and vanilla frosting added to the friendly feeling of the house.

In the other room, the crowd from the game booed as more whistles were blown. An angry mutter from the older man in the sitting room had the younger one in the kitchen flinching as he worked. When it was clear the elder wasn’t getting up, the boy continued, slowly, carefully spreading a thick, even layer of frosting on the birthday cake’s top.

Tugging at the hem of his shirt, the young man crossed the kitchen, quietly setting the spatula in the sink after he was done. As he turned back toward the cake he’d nearly finished, the front door was pulled open as his foster mother finally arrived home after work.

She sniffed quietly, inhaling the inviting smells, and hummed an appreciative sound. “You’re baking? What did you make?” She questioned, her tone not necessarily hostile, but not exactly soft and loving either. She’d no doubt had a hard day at work and was ready to relax for the evening.

“A cake.” Her foster son said, his voice a deep but quiet rumble. He didn’t bother looking at her, keeping his blue eyes directed on what he was doing as he pressed a few candles through the thick frosting and into the surface of the cake.

“A cake? What for?” The woman asked as she dropped her purse on the kitchen table and left her shoes by the door. She’d been pretty once, and she still was if you didn’t look too close. A hard life of disappointment, frustration and sorrow had taken its toll on her. The only smile to find her aging features was fake, a show for those around her while at work. She hid behind it, so no one would see the shell she’d become.

The young man frowned, his sever brows pulling together tighter than usual, and tried not to be offended. “For my birthday.” He mumbled, “It was today.”

She seemed to hesitate behind where he worked, a pause in her step and should he have turned around, he would have seen the remorseful expression that flittered across her features. But he didn’t, and she’d long ago come to the conclusion that she no longer knew how to interact with the child they’d taken in. The boy was supposed to be her’s, her husband’s, if not by blood then in heart, but he wasn’t, not anymore. Maybe he never had been. It made little difference. Things didn’t always work out the way they were supposed to.

“…happy birthday.” She said a heartbeat late, her voice quiet.

The boy -taller than her now, and heavier for sure- in her care merely nodded a barely there acknowledgment, and still didn’t turn.

The woman left the kitchen and wandered down the hall, leaving her foster son alone as he pocketed a lighter and picked up his homemade birthday cake. Grimmjow sighed but wasn’t surprised. This was how it was every year, every day. Why would his eighteenth birthday be any different? It didn’t matter that it was supposed to be special, that it was supposed to mean something or that it should have been a milestone in his life.

The people that were supposed to take care of him, that were supposed to see him as their son, hardly seemed to see him as a person at all. They didn’t really want a child, not anymore, not one that wasn’t really their own.

Grimmjow, once a little boy that had been left without a family after surviving a car accident he shouldn’t have, had coasted from foster family to foster family, from school to school. Now, he lived with the very last, but he didn’t know just how much longer he could stand it. He didn’t expect differently from the couple that had taken him in, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want differently. They’d grudgingly taken him in after hearing that he only had one more chance before he ended up in juvenile detention and, statistically speaking, prison after that. Grimmjow thought maybe they had seen him as their last chance, too, to have a complete family. He’d thought, when they’d first started filling out paperwork and setting up meetings with him, that maybe they could help each other. He was a broken boy. They were a broken couple. A broken family could still be a family.

They were supposed to be good for each other, but things don’t always work that way.

They’d tried to have a family of their own once. Grimmjow knew that much even though they didn’t talk about it. He’d found the evidence when he was younger, years ago now, after they’d first taken him in. Their son, just a baby still, had died before his third birthday. He didn’t know how the smiling little orange-haired boy had died, but it had almost ended their marriage. Grimmjow was sure they’d tried again, they still had all the paper work from the various doctors they’d spent their fortunes on, but they still had no children of their own despite the efforts made by them and by the doctors.

Desperate to save themselves and what they had left of each other, thinking a child would fix the issues that had crept up over time, they had sought to adopt. They’d chosen a boy that would have been their son’s age, had their biological boy lived, and they’d spent the first couple years of Grimmjow’s stay trying to groom him into what they thought their son should have been. But Grimmjow wasn’t the child they’d given birth to, he wasn’t the boy they’d lost, nor the solution to their problems.

They’d never finalized the adoption papers, only the ones for foster care. They took him in, took care of him sort of, and were considered his guardians, but he didn’t share their last name, just like he didn’t fit their role as a worthy son.

So while their house was nice, their cars expensive, their smiles fake and they painted the picture of an outstanding and caring couple, their was no love in the house, nothing to make it into a home. They had loved each other once, or so Grimmjow believed, but the financial issues on top of losing a child had pulled them apart. Fostering a kid they didn’t quite want hadn’t helped. He’d been thirteen when they had taken him in. Now he was old enough to take care of himself and they holed him up in a spare room and sent him to high school, but they did little else. Grimmjow was left to himself most of the time and while most younger men his age wished they had that, he only grew to loath it over the years.

Grimmjow wasn’t the type to make friends easily. Brash and unforgiving in personality, the few that he did make rarely stuck around for long, or they got him in more trouble than he could afford. He acted meek enough around the house, depression and loathing cooling his fire until it was only smoldering coals, but when he was away, when he got some fresh air and had a clearer mind that allowed him to think about his situation, he realized how awful it was. He got angry a lot. So over the few years he’d lived with his current foster parents and went to the local high school, the other kids his age had begun to avoid him.

He’d managed to get a girlfriend once, the year before, but it hadn’t lasted long. She hadn’t really liked him, nor cared for him in any way other than for his looks. She was just a preppy cheerleader that thought the world ate from her palm, so naturally her friends had dared her to score with the guy everyone thought was scary and deranged. But Grimmjow hadn’t really cared for her either, so it didn’t really matter.

At six feet tall already, he had the size and build to play sports, but his grades would barely allow for him to stay on a team and he’d already been held back a year. Plus his foster parents demanded that he be home in time for chores. Chores and an orderly schedule made for outstanding gentlemen, or so his foster parents had used to tell him. They didn’t say those kinds of things anymore.

So he didn’t even have sports as an outlet, nor a way to connect with people his age. He sat in the back of the class all day long, barely paying attention to the teachers as he doodled grotesque things -mostly a car he could just barely make out from his memories, the roof crinkled and the front end gone- on his notes and he spent his evenings doing what little homework he bothered with, just enough to pass his classes, before making sure the house was spotless.

After school and after his chores were done, he typically ate his dinner in his room, avoiding the two who had taken him in and the unbearably heavy air around them. It usually worked out better when they saw little of him, so he spent almost all his time there, hidden away on the second floor of the house, in a room that hadn’t been meant for him. They mostly left him alone when he was there, like they forgot about him, forgot that there was a young man they had no relation to in their house.

But he was eighteen now. That should have made everything better, but because he was a ward of the state, he had to graduate before he could leave. The government wanted well educated and upstanding citizens. So it was only a matter of time before he could finally get away, but that time seemed to drag by.

Sneaking passed his foster father, Grimmjow carried his cake up the stairs to where his bedroom was located. He got to the top of the landing when booted feet were dropped to the floor and an angry curse reverberated around the sitting room. Flinching again, the young man sneered as he paused, waiting to hear if he’d be called for. He listened to the angry muttering and the sound of footsteps as they disappeared down the hall that led to the master bedroom below, then continued on his way as a female voice was added to the angry mix.

Once in what passed as his room, Grimmjow set the cake on a desk that had been pushed up against one wall under a window, right next to his bed. Even though night had finally fallen, he pulled the string and raised the blinds. He cracked the window a few inches, just sitting there as he stared out and felt the fresh breeze that drifted through the screen. The smell of his cake wafted back to him and he sighed as he fished the lighter from his pocket. Head propped up in one hand, his elbow on the desk and a carefully controlled expression of boredom on his features, Grimmjow flicked it to life before dragging the flame over the few candles.

Once they were all alight, not eighteen of them because he hadn’t found that many and none would have been boughten for him, he sat and stared at the dancing flames. Small and contained, they fluttered in the light breeze coming through his window, nearly blowing out, yet still they danced. Like fire always was, the small flames were hungry for more, something more than just wax, hungry to grow and spread, hungry to consume anything that would burn.

Mind lost in thought, Grimmjow slowly passed his hand over the small flames, feeling their heat sear his palm. It didn’t hurt, not really, not enough to make him stop, but it reddened his golden flesh, it made him feel something. Even as his mind continued to wander, lost to its thoughts, the small amount of pain seemed to awaken something in him; that need for more, the need to fill a hole he’d had since he was just a child.

There was something wrong with him, he’d thought to himself on more than one occasion. There was something missing, sitting hollow and empty in the pit of his stomach. He’d been cut open and something essential, something living had been ripped out.

“Just one.” He mumbled to himself, eyes trained unblinkingly on the candles. He wandered what it would feel like if he could fill in and reshape what had been taken from him. What would it be like to feel…full? “That’s all I want, just one person to keep me company.” Someone to call a friend, someone who would stand at his side when he needed it most. Just one person who wouldn’t look at him like he was their failed hope and crushed dreams. Someone he didn’t look back at and see how broken he was reflected in them.

He watched little beads of molten wax drip down the sides of the few candles. It cooled quickly. It wasn’t like the fire, like him. It wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t like wax, he needed something more than what he’d been given, something that would help him burn and keep him breathing.

Brows furrowing into an almost angry scowl, Grimmjow laughed at himself, his cold blue eyes losing the hard gleam of the mask he put on in front of everyone else. He laughed at his own stupidity for wishing such a thing, he laughed at how childish it was, how weak. He laughed at his own helplessness and he laughed at how close he was to having his freedom but he knew nothing would change. He’d been conditioned to be alone. He would always be alone and some part of him knew that, when he looked deep enough into his own soul. He laughed at that too. Did he even have a soul? If so, it was small and fluttery, locked away in a cage and unable to spread its wings, like a butterfly in a jar. Maybe that was what was missing, what was making him feel so hollow.

But he didn’t laugh at the pain his truths caused. He didn’t laugh at how utterly far he was from that one thing he wanted the most, that one thing he _needed_ the most. He wasn’t greedy, he didn’t need much, just one.

“Happy birthday to me.” Grimmjow muttered as he blew out his candles. Sitting alone in the darkened room that wasn’t really his, he cut himself a piece of cheap birthday cake and ate it from the pan. It was sweet on his tongue but he hardly tasted it. The thick layer of frosting was rich and creamy, but it didn’t lighten his mood. All the comfort food in the house wouldn’t make his wish come true, wouldn’t lift his soul or change his situation.

Unable to finish even that first piece, he pushed the pan away. After sitting unmoving for several, long minutes, he stood up. He grabbed the almost untouched cake and took it back downstairs, knowing what would happen if his foster parents found it still in his room tomorrow. Pausing in the doorway of the sitting room, he glanced at the older man seated on the couch once more, a fresh beer in hand as he watched the last quarter of the game.

“Today was my birthday. I made a cake, if you want a piece...” He didn’t really expect a reply or even an acknowledgement, he’d grown used to being ignored, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t still sting somewhere down inside him. Part of him wanted the man to wish him a happy birthday, to invite him to watch the game with him, even just to look at him, but he shoved that part back down and turned away from his foster father.

He wasn’t the son Isshin had wanted, and Grimmjow knew the older man was reminded of that every time he looked at the foster child in his house.

Grimmjow wrapped the cake in cling wrap and set it on the stove. He washed his fork and the few dishes he’d used to bake the cake, then he returned to his room, silent and alone. Closing the door behind himself, he laid down on his bed. He didn’t drop onto it, that sort of motion showed too much emotion and he was too numb, but rather he slid under the sheets and rolled onto his stomach, cushioning his head with his arms as he stared at the wall opposite him. After a while, a restless sleep found him.

That night, in the darkness, Grimmjow dreamed. It was dark behind his closed eyes as well, staining his mind like ink. In his dreamscape, the house he lived in was cast in deep shadows, night long ago fallen and never to lift again. Everything was silent for a long time, silent and still and monochrome. It felt hollow, like the missing space in the pit of his stomach.

His foster parents were there, the husband sitting on the couch, passed out after working too many long hours to avoid his house, then drinking himself numb when he’d finally returned. He was the first to go, Grimmjow knew it before it happened. The darkness was suddenly split, like lightening ripping the sky asunder, and it left behind a wide, manic grin as gold flashed in the shadows.

His foster father screamed as red was suddenly added to all the black and grey of the shadows. His foster mother came running, he didn’t know where from, but it really didn’t matter. Her blood was added to the red already painting the carpet. Like flowers in the spring, the deep crimson of their life blossomed through the air. It splattered the walls, the couch, the flat screen of the tv. It smeared across the windows in a crazed pattern of wet handprints and childish drawings. It flecked the curtains and clung heavy in the air. Bare feet tracked it into the kitchen, slipping slightly on the once clean tile. Red smeared across a white canvas, it splashed ghostly features and stained long fingers, but it couldn’t hide that too wide grin.

His foster parents begged. They screamed and cried and struggled in the dark, shivering as the warmth of their blood dripped down pale arms, catching under dark nails. They begged for their lives and something about that was ironic and sad. They begged for it all to stop, but to Grimmjow’s way of thinking, they’d stopped living when their real son had. They offered money, possessions, anything at all, but as sickly gold was turned away, slowly traveling up the staircase, step by step by step, and to the door that the only other person in the house slept behind, they said nothing.

The couple that had taken him in but didn’t love him didn’t beg for his life. They didn’t ask that he be spared, they didn’t even mention him, not even after their killer showed he knew Grimmjow was in the house. They only thought of themselves. He was just another thing in their house, something they would offer to the monster too.

In his dream, Grimmjow watched as his foster parents were brutally murdered by something so white and so pure, something that wasn’t dark like the empty shadows of his mind or of his house, something that burned like fire and felt like ice. Hungry, always hungry. The pale killer, a monster and a man both, dipped his hands in the mess he made. He spread it across the mirrors, he dumped it in the sinks. He filled bowls and took his time setting up a dinner for two at the table. There was so much blood, too much. When it was over, no shadows remained. No black filled the house, no white. Only red. Everything was red and his foster parents were dead, yet still that wicked grin could be seen, something bright and burning and white in the dark.

Grimmjow gasped and bolted upright, his blue eyes impossibly wide in the dark of his bedroom. He scanned the room, panting and sweating in the aftermath of his nightmare as he sought out that too wide grin.

Throwing the covers off, he leapt to the floor, landed on his feet, and took off. He flung his door open so fast he was surprised it stayed on the hinges but he was already halfway down the stairs when it struck the wall behind it, the knob punching through drywall. Taking them three and four at a time, he landed in a ready stance upon the first floor, where he finally slowed.

Still breathing hard, he furrowed his brows as he slowly looked around. The house was clean, the shadows intact. The cake he’d made sat on the stove where he’d put it, another piece missing. He turned to the sitting room to find his foster father passed out on the couch in front of the television, infomercials playing across the bright screen.

Swallowing as he regained control of his breathing and his panic, Grimmjow quietly crept over to the sleeping man and took the remote. He shut the tv off and put the remote back on the coffee table before cleaning up a few of the empty beer cans and throwing them in the recycling bin. Sighing to himself, Grimmjow silently padded down the hall, pushing the master bedroom door open just far enough to see his foster mother was asleep in the bed -light brown, nearly blond hair splashed over the pillow- before he closed it once more and made his way back upstairs.

The door to his room was closed, but he didn’t put much thought into it and he pushed it open, backing into the room so that he could just as quietly pull it shut behind him, conscious of waking up his caretakers now that he was no longer panicking. Turning around, he faced his empty room, finding it just as dark and quiet as the rest of the house had been, despite his horrifying nightmare.

Pushing a hand back through his chaotic, oddly colored hair, Grimmjow sighed again and tiredly climbed back into bed. He pulled the blankets back over himself and rolled over to face the blank, white wall his bed was pushed up against. Closing his eyes, he shifted about to get comfortable, kicking something heavy in the process.

Frowning, Grimmjow grumbled under his breath and rolled back over to glare at the offending object, only to yelp and bolt back upright as a young man looked back at him. A friendly smile adorned fair features, haloed in spiky hair of almost familiar, riotous orange. The young man pulled a fork from his mouth with an appreciative hum as Grimmjow stared at him in shocked and stunned silence.

“This is really good!” The young man exclaimed quietly, cutting away another piece of cake with the edge of his fork. “Chocolate is my favorite. Did you make it?”

Grimmjow nodded numbly before scrambling even further upright, finding his senses again. “Who the fuck are you?!” He half yelled, half whispered in an aggressive voice, still trying to stay quiet so that he didn’t wake his foster parents.

“Oh, my name’s Ichigo.” The boy said, smiling again as he took another bite, still sitting at the foot of Grimmjow’s bed where nothing had sat only moments before.

“Who- what are you doing in my house?? How did you get in here?” Grimmjow climbed to his feet, towering over the seated lad, every hard line of muscle on his body rigid with aggression and caution.

The young man looked up at him with warm ocher eyes, the picture of calm and unfazed by his temper. “I heard your wish.”

“My... What? Get the hell out of my room.” Grimmjow snarled at the stranger, his shoulders hunching slightly as he stooped lower and closer to the odd boy.

“Your wish.” Ichigo repeated, looking up patiently at the bigger teen. “The one you made for your birthday, remember? I want to be your friend.”

Grimmjow stared at the man for a moment, his features tugged into a shocked and incredulous expression. After that moment, his upper lip curled to flash white teeth as his frigid gaze narrowed. “You’re crazy. Get out of my house before I make you.”

The orange haired boy let out a good natured laugh, a handsome smile creasing his features and lighting up his eyes. He set aside the cake he’d been eating, carefully laying the fork on the plate so he didn’t make a mess. Then, crossing his hands in his lap, he tilted his head as he looked up at the taller young man. “It doesn’t work that way. I can’t just leave, you created me.”

“I- what?” Grimmjow’s angry expression fell into something a little more confused. “You don’t make any sense. Leave.”

The boy named Ichigo sighed, finally starting to show some exasperation. “I already told you it doesn’t work like that. I’m your wish, the friend you wanted. You created me.”

When Grimmjow said nothing, just stared down at the odd young man, Ichigo continued.

“If you really want me to leave, you’ll have to destroy me yourself.” He told the bigger man, leaning back to support his weight on his hands while he continued to look up at Grimmjow, unfazed by the hight difference most would find daunting. “I can only be sent away by my creator. It’s not that hard to do. However you would destroy a normal person should work.”

“You mean... kill you...?” Grimmjow’s eyes widened as he stared down at the strange person, most of his aggression slowly draining away, replaced by equal parts confusion and curiosity.

Ichigo shrugged. “Well, yes. I suppose that’s what it would be called here.”

“I-I’m not going to kill you! I don’t even know you!” Grimmjow was at a loss. “Why the hell would I want to kill you?”

The smaller’s features lit up again, that happy smile back as he sat up straight again and clasped his hands in front of himself excitedly. “Good! Then we can be friends?” He asked with a hopeful gleam in his brown eyes.

“Uhhh... Ok, fine– I don’t know. This is…” Grimmjow slowly sat down on the edge of his bed, never taking his eyes from the stranger. “How did you get in here though? I should have seen you when I came into the room.”

“Oh, I guess I haven’t answered most of your questions yet.” Ichigo smiled over at the bigger man sitting next to him, picking up his piece of cake again. “I walked in I guess. Maybe... That’s what most people do, right?” He tilted his head in thought, fork sticking out of his mouth. “Are we upstairs or downstairs?”

“Uh, we’re on the second floor...”

“Oh... I guess I didn’t walk then. I don’t remember the stairs I heard you run down. Up. I think the other one brought me.” Ichigo shrugged, taking a bite of the cake before holding it up almost proudly to show it to Grimmjow. “He brought me this. Happy birthday, by the way.”

“Thanks...” Grimmjow slowly cast his vision around his darkened room. It was empty except for himself and the other young man seated next to him. “There’s another one? In here?”

“Hmm, no, it’s just me.” Ichigo took the last bite of his cake, licking the frosting from the fork. “And you of course.”

Grimmjow watched him for a moment, silent, before his sever brows furrowed all over again. “But you just said...”

“Yeah, I know.” Ichigo sighed and set aside the fork. “But it’s hard being real.” He huffed and crossed his arms. “Do you have any idea how tough it is? Of course you do, you are real. The rules here are different than where I’m from. It’ll get easier though, I’ll get the hang of it.”

Again it took Grimmjow a moment to respond.

“So... are you real, or am I just seeing things?” Grimmjow stifled a yawn, glancing over at his alarm clock. He’d have to be up for school in a couple hours, but he wasn’t too worried about being late, or not showing up at all.

“Eh, that’s a grey area right now. I’m kind of real. I will be real. The longer I’m around the more real I’ll be, but you’re seeing things too.” Ichigo turned to Grimmjow, a hopeful gleam in his expressive eyes. “Can I have more cake?”

“Great, so now I’m crazy and I’m talking to something that may or may not be real.” Grimmjow couldn’t help the small, almost dry and helpless chuckle that escaped him and a bit of a smirk tilted his lips. The only humor in the expression was mocking at best. Why wouldn’t more go wrong with his life? And just when he’d been trying to convince himself everything would get better soon. He finally shrugged in answer to the stranger’s question and stood from the bed. Why not. “Stay here, I’ll get you another piece.”

“I’m a _he_ , not a _something_...” Ichigo scowled for a moment, watching as the blue haired young man that had brought him to life crossed the room to the door. As Grimmjow pushed the door open to leave the room and get Ichigo his second piece of cake, Ichigo’s scowl let up again. “Thank you!”

Grimmjow snorted a small laugh, the smirk still slanting his features, though a tiny bit of the dry bitterness lessened. At least his imagination was conjuring up something cute for him to make friends with. It was better than nothing. Anyone, real or not, was better than being completely alone. “No problem, just stay here and stay quiet.”

“Ok.” Ichigo whispered quietly back to him, scooting further onto the bed so that his back rested against the wall. He smiled as he watched Grimmjow disappear into the short hall that led to the stairwell, as silent as a ghost.

The blue haired young man quickly scurried down the stairs. Having long ago grown used to them over the years, he made not a sound. He peeked into the sitting room, seeing his foster father still passed out on the couch, before ducking into the kitchen. As he stepped through the wide doorway, his back to the sitting room and the stairwell, quiet, rushed footsteps sounded from somewhere near the couch.

Grimmjow spun around, expecting to see Ichigo following behind him, but no one stood near him and the sitting room to his back was empty save for his drunken foster parent. Turning back toward the kitchen, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, hardly a relief to the shadows of the house as something darted off toward the hallway. Grimmjow jolted in surprise before his brows furrowed and he quickly but quietly took off after the fleeing figure.

“Ichigo!” He hissed, keeping his voice low so as to not awaken anyone, but still loud enough that the boy should have heard him. He didn’t receive an answer and the young man he chased after didn’t pause. As Grimmjow turned into the hallway, standing in its entrance, a door that led to a small office room halfway down the hall swayed on its hinges.

“Hey, you were supposed to stay put…!” Grimmjow darted in that direction, pushing the door open the rest of the way, but again he found no one and the room was empty. “Ichigo?”

A frown tugging at his features, Grimmjow turned from the room, closing the door behind him with the quiet click of the latch. Down at the end of the hallway, he just barely caught someone swiftly dart passed the entrance, back toward the kitchen again.

“Ichigo!” He called in a whisper again, following behind the figure. A barely there chuckle reached his ears, like the boy was toying with him and enjoying every second of it.

He entered the kitchen to once again find no one. Shaking his head, Grimmjow looked about the room and was about to turn and continue his search for the wandering young lad when he realized that a clean plate sat next to the cake, but only two pieces were missing still. Raising a brow, Grimmjow muttered under his breath in exasperation and pulled the plastic wrap away from the cake. Cutting a piece, he set it on the plate and turned away from the stove. Leaving the kitchen, he peeked into the sitting room and then down the hall again, looking for where Ichigo could have gone.

With a quiet growl, Grimmjow quickly scaled the stairs, going back to his room. He pushed the door open, expecting the room to be empty, only to see Ichigo sitting on the bed leaning back against the wall like he had been when Grimmjow had left.

“Jeeze, if I would have known getting a piece of cake was so difficult I wouldn’t have asked for another.” The orange haired man said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper as he stayed nearly silent like his new friend had asked. “Did you get lost?”

“What? No, I didn’t get lost.” Grimmjow sneered at him, seating himself on the bed and handing over the plate. As he had before, Ichigo’s face split into a smile too innocent for his apparent age as he accepted the chocolate cake, eagerly digging in. “I was chasing you around, why didn’t you stay here like I had told you to?”

“I didn’t leave.” Ichigo pouted slightly, a scowl pulling at his boyishly handsome features while he stuck a bite in his mouth. “I’ve been sitting here waiting. Real life is boring when there’s no one around, by the way. Normally I’d just conjure up my own little town and kill monsters and become a hero or something, but you can’t do that here... I tried while you were getting cake. Nothing happened.”

The frown didn’t last long as the odd boy enjoyed his treat. The orange haired teen’s carefree mannerisms and the way he simply spoke his mind was refreshing, and it helped to push back the stifling silence Grimmjow was normally surrounded by, but the bigger man’s features still pulled into a slightly perplexed expression, a bit of confusion and even curiosity showing through. Grimmjow watched the strange lad eat a few bites, seemingly unconcerned about the accusations being held against him. “Ichigo?”

“Hmm?” Molten brown eyes turned upward as Ichigo pulled the fork from his mouth, cutting away another bite.

“You stayed up here like I asked?”

“Yep. Don’t want to wake up the people you live with.” Ichigo told the bigger man, tilting his head slightly as he continued to look at Grimmjow with his expressive gaze, the chocolatey treat perched on the edge of his fork. “Why?”

“And you’re sure there isn’t another, uh, one of whatever you are here?” Grimmjow shifted where he sat, scooting back to match Ichigo’s positioning and lean against the wall behind his bed.

“I’m a person, almost just like you.” Ichigo sighed and rolled his eyes. “Remember? A _he_ , not a _thing_.”

“Right...” Grimmjow mumbled. “Sorry. So are you sure you’re the only one here?”

“It’s ok, you’ll get the hang of me being real too.” A pleased smile creased Ichigo’s features at Grimmjow’s correction. “And... Well, there’s you and I, and of course your fake mom and dad. That’s so strange to me, why would you live with-”

“Ichigo.”

“Hmm?” The smaller looked up from his chocolaty treat again.

“Is there anyone else? Besides the four of us?” Grimmjow pushed. “Earlier you weren’t sure...”

“Oh. Nope, just us.” Ichigo swallowed down another bite. “Why? Seeing things? I think I said that earlier too.”

Grimmjow snorted a small sound and curled his lip. “Yeah, I guess you did.”

Eventually, Grimmjow curled back up on his bed, Ichigo sitting happily at the foot where he’d been the whole of the night, and went back to sleep. He was awakened early the next morning by his foster mother pounding on his door.

“Grimmjow, get up! You’re going to be late.”

The young man rolled over and cracked his eyes open to glare death at the door. He’d only finally settled down for the night an hour or so before, there was no way he was dragging himself from bed. At his feet, Ichigo shifted. Grimmjow looked down his body at the boy to find him seated cross legged almost exactly where he’d left him before falling asleep, though his brown eyes were wide and trained on the door like he expected it to burst open and some sort of horrible monster to swoop into the room.

Grimmjow snorted a laugh. “She’s not _that_ bad. The man’s the one you gotta worry about, when he drinks.”

“What was that?” His foster mother shouted through the door at him. She didn’t open it though, like the room was off limits to her, despite it being her house.

“I said I’m not goin’!” Grimmjow grumbled, turning his vision back toward the door as he began making himself comfortable again and prepared to go back to sleep. “I’m not feelin’ well.”

“Well it serves you right for eating half a chocolate cake.” The woman scolded.

“What? I didn’t-” His eyes narrowed as he looked down at Ichigo again. The orange haired boy wore a sheepish, guilty expression. Grimmjow sighed and addressed his foster parent again. “You caught me. Now can I go back to sleep before I puke it all back up?”

The woman scoffed, complaining under her breath about how he was going to be held back another year, but he listened to her retreating footsteps as she wandered back down the stairs to continue getting ready for work. Grimmjow turned back to his guest, sitting up and letting the blankets fall from his upper half. “You ate half of a cake?” He asked in a quiet voice, a blue brow arching.

Ichigo ducked in a sheepish motion, a small but bright smile on his handsome features. “I was bored while you were sleeping...”

“You were bored-” Grimmjow paused, shaking his head as he chastised the young man, “Ichigo, you have to stay up here. You can’t let them see you.”

“I know.” Ichigo’s small smile turned into an equally small frown as he crossed his arms defensively. “I stayed here, just like you said. I haven’t moved all night.”

“Then how did you get the cake?”

“I-” Ichigo started to answer, only cut himself off with a deeper frown as he thought. “Hmm... I don’t really know. I think it was brought to me again.”

Grimmjow scrubbed a hand down his still tired features as he flopped back to the mattress. He blew out a sigh and shook his head slightly. “Things don’t work that way here, Ichigo. It didn’t magically cut itself and appear up here.”

A scowl tugged at boyish features. “I didn’t leave your room.” Ichigo insisted, unhappy about being wrongly accused.

“Well I didn’t bring it to you.” Grimmjow pointed out. “And neither of my foster parents did. There’s no one else in the house.”

“Not anymore...” Ichigo muttered petulantly. “It’s just chocolate cake, I don’t understand why you’re upset at me...”

“I’m not upset, and the cake isn’t the issue. You just need to stay aw- wait.” Grimmjow bolted upright again, his eyes narrowed on Ichigo. “What did you say?”

Orange brows arched as Ichigo managed to look both surprised and a little uneasy, like he again wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong. “I said it was just cake...”

“No, before that. You said there wasn’t anyone else here _anymore_...” Grimmjow eyed the strange young man with a critical, cold blue gaze. “What’s that mean? Was there someone else here earlier? Even though you said there wasn’t.”

Ichigo chewed the inside of his cheek while he thought, brown eyes straying toward the door of the bedroom. “I don’t know... I think maybe, while you were sleeping. He likes purple. You get it by mixing red and blue.”

I know how to make purple.” Grimmjow said offhandedly, brushing the comment off. He leaned forward where he sat, his hands closing around Ichigo’s upper arms, and redirected the topic back to what was important, “What do you mean you _think_? Was there or wasn’t there? Who the hell else is in my house!?” His voice was a demanding growl.

“I don’t know!” Ichigo pulled back with wide eyes, trying to escape the harsh grip as his features twisted with discomfort and unease. “This is hard, ok? I didn’t create me or the other one! It’s your mind, you should be the one to know.”

Blue brows furrowed all the harder, but Grimmjow relaxed his grip and allowed his hands to be pushed away from the smaller’s person. He frowned at what Ichigo seemed to be implying, thinking back to the events of that night. He was already starting to feel like he was losing his mind. What other explanation made sense for all this? If his caretakers found out he was talking to an imaginary boy hidden up in his room, he was sure they would jump on the chance to lock him away, where they wouldn’t have to bother with him anymore. It would be the perfect out for them. They’d be pitied, seen as the unfortunate and tragic parents that had tried as hard as they could to no avail.

With another small sigh, Grimmjow laid back down again, and rolled over onto his side. An hour of sleep wasn’t enough rest to be tormenting himself with all this. “In a few hours, they should be at work. We’ll go downstairs and I’ll show you a few things about being real, ok?” He asked in a mumbled voice, closing brilliant blue eyes.

A small smile twitched on his lips as he felt the being still seated at the foot of his bed wiggle excitedly. He vaguely felt Ichigo shift to make himself more comfortable as his mind began to drift back into the still, calm darkness of sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one ended up a little shorter than the first, but the third will be longer, if not the longest of the story.
> 
> Enjoy!

**_Hypnagogic Hallucination - a vivid dreamlike hallucination that occurs as one is falling asleep._ **

 

* * *

 

With a tired yawn, Grimmjow rubbed the sleep from his eyes and dropped an elbow on the kitchen table. His guardians had already left for the day, leaving him alone, in the company of the boy who may or may not have been real.  
 ****

He still wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Ichigo claimed that he was in the process of becoming real, somehow both alive and not. He said that Grimmjow was seeing things and that’s why he could be seen, yet the strange lad could eat very real cake from the pan and move objects. Ichigo could manipulate the things he found in the world around him, stuck somewhere between being a hallucination, a projection, and being a real kid. Like a ghost, a specter.

_“Grimmjow, you promised to show me around.”_

The bigger man groaned a quiet, tired sound and pushed the smaller back a step. “Give me a sec, ok? This is part of being real.” He pulled a bowl closer to himself. A second one had been sat out in front of Ichigo, but the kid didn’t seem to have grasped the concept of breakfast just yet and hadn’t even looked at it.

Grimmjow grunted, tugging his own a bit closer still before picking up the jug of milk and pouring it over his cereal.

_“Grimmjow-!”_

“Chill!” The young man snapped, still tired and half asleep. “The world’s not going anywhere. After I eat and wake up I’ll show you around.”

He picked up his spoon and stirred his cereal around a bit, hunched over his bowl tiredly, before taking a bite. Something crunched strangely in his mouth, the texture gritty and dry, despite the milk. He frowned, grimaced, and looked down into his bowl.

Sitting on the table before him, two bowls of thick, crimson liquid had been laid out. The spoons shone too bright, too metallic against the sudden darkness of the room.

Blue eyes shot wide and Grimmjow scrambled away from his chair so fast he knocked it over and nearly tripped on the upturned legs. He gagged on what he’d been eating, choked as brilliant red dripped down his chin and stained his sleep rumpled shirt. He coughed, stomach and mind revolting against what he’d been doing, and looked down to see his hands stained the same color as his shirt. The smell of blood was thick and cloying in the air and he backed up further. Away. He had to get away.

_“Grimmjow-“_

There was a meal for two set up at his red stained table and the silverware gleamed too bright, too clean against the ghastly color but everything else was red. All around him was red. It stained the carpet, soaked through his socks, his pants. It coated his hands and splattered up his arms and suddenly that grin was back, slashing white through the red. Too white, too clean. Ichigo was no longer there but something else had taken his place -something that shone with gold and ill intent, something too clean and too white- and it grinned at Grimmjow, at what he had done.

_“Wake up-!”_

Grimmjow gasped a sharp sound as he jolted upright. The bed springs creaked below his sudden shift in weight. He choked out a horrified sound as he scrambled up, away from the bed, his breathing hard and panicked. A hand, hot and solid, found his arm, another settled gently against his cheek. Still waking up from the nightmare his mind had conjured, he tried to jerk away before his wide, blue eyes landed on worried brown.

“You were having a dream...” Ichigo told him, his voice nearly a whisper as he looked up at the bigger boy responsible for bringing him to life.

Grimmjow swallowed thickly, reaching up to wipe the back of a shaky hand across his mouth and chin, before turning his gaze around the rest of the room. Nothing but his usual bedroom looked back at him; the usual clutter, the usual shadows and the slashes of late morning sunlight reaching in through the blinds of his window. The walls were a pale, greyish-blue and the carpet was a light beige. No red. Just a dream.

He nodded and looked back at Ichigo, finally beginning to calm down, his mind catching up to reality.

“Right, ok...” He mumbled, reaching up to scrub a hand down his features as the warmth against his cheek was removed. Only a dream. He put it behind him, stretched with a groan, then padded toward his bedroom door. “C’mon, lets go take a peek around.”

Practically giddy, Ichigo followed along behind him, eager to see what being real was all about. The dream was forgotten, chocked up as just another nightmare.

Grimmjow guided them down the stairs and, out of habit, peeked around the frame towards the sitting room and down the hall of the house, insuring his caretakers were indeed out. Of course they were, already off to their jobs; his foster father already in his white lab coat and hours into his work of saving lives at the local hospital, while his mother had left not quite so long ago, after realizing he’d be staying home from school that day.

When he was sure all was clear, Grimmjow stepped from the doorway, spreading his arms out a bit to motion towards the kitchen and adjacent sitting room. “Uh, tada, this is a house.” He told the other, a hint of sarcasm lighting his voice, “It’s a pretty typical one, I guess.” He had no idea what he was supposed to be showing the strange lad he’d found in his room and he felt ridiculous trying to decide what was worth pointing out and what wasn’t.

Ichigo turned a wry expression his way, “I know what a house is…”

Grimmjow threw his hands up, “How am I supposed to know what you know and what you don’t? You’re the one that said you don’t know how to be real yet.”

“Well I know the obvious things, obviously.” Ichigo countered, arching an orange brow like it was the most ridiculous thing in world.

“Obviously.” Grimmjow muttered dryly.

Ichigo merely rolled his eyes and edged around him, before casting a curious glance around the lower half of the house. Despite that he had to have gotten upstairs the night before somehow, none of it seemed familiar. The space surrounding him was clean but lived in. The carpet below his feet was plush and soft and he wiggled toes as he looked around. After a moment of silent, motionless study, he slowly, curiously wandered into the sitting room, carefully running his fingertips over various surfaces; the back of the couch, the entertainment stand, the windowpane, curtains, the rough brick of the fireplace that decorated one wall.

Grimmjow stood nearby, watching him explore the room with something of an amused smile on his features. It was strange, ridiculous, but he supposed that this was all new to Ichigo, surely a fascinating thing for him to experience for the first time ever, yet there was an odd sense of nostalgia to it all.

The strange boy started to turn to the hallway, like he would continue to roam the house, but paused and turned back to Grimmjow. The bigger man got the oddest impression that Ichigo, despite having been facing the hallway, simply forgot that it was there in that moment. He frowned a bit, but how should he know what was normal and what wasn’t for an imaginary friend.

“What do you normally do in the mornings?” Ichigo asked curiously, stepping away from the entryway to the hall. He didn’t quite turn his back fully to it though, side stepping back toward his creator, and Grimmjow wasn’t sure if it was a conscious or subconscious thing.

“Um, well most mornings,” Grimmjow turned toward the kitchen, Ichigo taking a few trotting steps to pull up beside him fully, “I start with breakfast.” He glanced to the figure walking at his side, “Are you hungry?”

“Hmm…” Ichigo settled a hand over his stomach and seemed to contemplate, “I think so.”

“We’ll make something then,” Grimmjow told him with a bit wider of a smile. He went to a cupboard and pulled out two bowls, intending to go with the most classic of breakfasts. But turning to the table, before he even set the bowls down, images from his nightmare flashed through his mind. He froze in his tracks, jolting a small step as he looked down to see, for just a split second, red staining his fingers and arms and dripping from the curved sides of the bowls in his hands.

One porcelain dish nearly crashed to the ground, slipping from his shock slackened hands. It would have shattered across the floor had it not been for Ichigo’s quick reaction. He caught the bowl before it could hit the ground, and straightened at Grimmjow’s side, giving his new friend a slightly worried look.

Grimmjow blinked, looked at him, and took the bowl. Stacking it atop the other still in his other hand, he wiped his free hand down the lower half of his features and shook his head in answer to Ichigo’s unspoken question. “It’s nothing.” He told the kid in a rough voice. His hand came away clean.

Turning back to the cupboard, he put the bowls back and pulled plates free instead, “Lets make something better. How about eggs and toast?”

Ichigo studied him for a moment more, before a brilliant smile lit his features and he said, “Ok! Sounds good, whatever it is.”

Grunting a laugh, Grimmjow turned toward the stove. On his way by, he pulled the carton of eggs from the fridge, then a frying pan from a cupboard. With the pan on the stove and the burner warming up, he pulled open the carton and debated how many he should make. He looked back over at Ichigo as he pulled free an egg, absently cracking it open on the edge of the pan.

The contents hissed as they slid into the hot pan. Looking back to the task at hand, Grimmjow nearly gagged as he was faced with a mess of liquid rot. The shell fell from his hand to rock upon the counter top. Within the pan, a worm the color of dead flesh wriggled and writhed through the greenish black yolk. It coiled around a half formed embryo, like it could choke the life from an unborn, already dead creature.

Grimmjow took a step away, ready to yank the pan from the stove and dump the bad egg. His back hit Ichigo though, and the smaller male peered around him and into the pan, a frown on his fair features and a steadying hand against Grimmjow’s back. “Is that not what it’s supposed to look like?” He asked.

“No–!“ But as Grimmjow turned back to the pan, sizzling at its bottom, the contents of a perfectly normal egg went from clear-ish to a milky white as it cooked. “I…” Grimmjow shook his head a bit, brows furrowing in an upward, almost lost expression, “No, uh, it’s fine. I-“ He trailed off, and pulled another egg from the carton.

At his side, Ichigo looked up at him and asked quietly, “Seeing things still?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Turning to continue exploring the kitchen, the imaginary teen said, “It’ll go away.” as he pulled open a random cupboard to peek inside, before moving to the next thing that caught his interest. “It just takes time, I guess.”

“This is normal, than?” Grimmjow asked, frowning into the frying pan. He ignored the nauseating smell of decay that came with cracking open the second egg, but at least it slid into the pan looking clean and edible this time.

Behind him, Ichigo shrugged and twisted a nob on the faucet. He ran his fingers through the stream of warm, clean water, “Yeah, I guess so. It makes sense anyway. Think about it; you just pulled an entire person from the depths of your mind, right? It makes sense that a few things might have slipped through the cracks alongside me.”

Grimmjow grunted a low, “Hn.” as he cooked. By the fourth egg he added, the kitchen quit smelling like death. Pointing over his shoulder, he directed Ichigo toward a different cabinet. “Grab a couple glasses from there, then decide what you want to drink with breakfast. There’s milk and a couple different kinds of juice in the fridge.”

Ichigo opened up the indicated cupboard and looked over the assortment of glasses within, before grabbing two at random and setting them on the table with the plates. “What kind of things are you seeing?” He asked curiously as he moved over to the fridge.

“Nasty things.” Grimmjow muttered, shaking his head a bit as he added two more eggs and pulled out a loaf of bread. He had no idea how much Ichigo would eat, but he assumed it would be nearly as much as he did, so he made plenty of food. “Like… I don’t know,” he motioned toward the frying pan and the cooking eggs within, “rotten eggs, blood, gore, people.”

“Hmm.” Ichigo poked his head in the fridge and came out with a jug of some kind of juice with a pretty purple color. Twisting the cap off, he smelled it and decided against it. “I’m not surprised. You have a lot of negativity around this place.” Putting the cap back, he pulled out a different carton and smelled that one too. It was orange in color, and smelled much better, refreshing even. “Not just from you. From your fake parents too.” He turned and put the carton on the table. “It would be even weirder if you were having happy hallucinations, wouldn’t it be?”

Grimmjow grunted something of a laugh, a hint of a smile twitching at one corner of his lips as he turned the burner off.

“Like pretty purple flowers growing from the sink or something,” Ichigo glanced at the two glasses he’d pulled from the cupboard critically, then slid into a seat at the table and began carefully pouring the juice. “Or a kitten maybe. That would be really odd.”

For a split second, as Grimmjow’s hand made contact with the handle of the pan, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw exactly what Ichigo was saying. Something warm and soft rubbed against his leg, a low purr emanating from below him. Brilliant, healthy purple flowers sprang from the drain in the sink, lush, green leaves and all. Roots crept across the stainless steel in writhing, twisting movements, pulsing as they fed from old, half dried gore that caked the sink.

By the time his fingers actually closed around the handle, the split second vision was gone and he blinked as he stepped away from the stove. “Yeah, that would be strange.” He muttered, joining Ichigo at the table.

It turned out to be a good thing he’d made plenty, because apparently Ichigo had the appetite of a growing child, despite that his apparent age was near that of Grimmjow’s. Between the two of them, the cleared what Grimmjow had made for breakfast, and Ichigo even had another piece of cake.

After breakfast, Grimmjow started clearing the dishes and Ichigo followed his lead. He even helped with washing them and Grimmjow couldn’t deny that it was kind of nice to have someone around to keep him company, even if he did feel crazy half the time and the other half, they spoke of trivial things like normal, everyday life.

Halfway through putting the now clean dishes away, something apparently caught Ichigo’s attention and he stepped away from the counter and wandered back toward the sitting room, where he paused in the doorway between that room and the kitchen. Grimmjow watched him as he seemed to study the room again, even though he’d already wandered through it before breakfast.

After a moment, he looked back at Grimmjow and the bigger teen merely shrugged, stepping away from the cupboard to follow as Ichigo began exploring some more. Once again, Ichigo trailed light fingertips over all the various textures around the room, before making it to the entrance of the hallway again. Unlike before, he paused and glanced down it, something of a frown tugging at his features.

Grimmjow trailed quietly behind, watching with a hint of amusement as Ichigo pushed doors open, peeked around the new room, then came back into the hallway. He worked his way down one entire side, until he made it to the master bedroom at the very end of the hall. The moment his fingertips settled on the cool wood of the door, Ichigo froze. He stood there for a few long moments, just looking at the door like he could see what lay beyond.

He stood there long enough that, still standing and watching from the opposite end of the hallway, Grimmjow shifted in place. He didn’t like his foster parents’ bedroom. The space felt dark and forbidden to him, haunted not by ghosts, but by personal demons and memories. The room at the end of the hallway, for as long as he’d been living in that house with the broken Kurosaki family, had always been a place to be avoided. It felt too much like intruding. The rest of the house had always felt shadowed too, like it wasn’t really a home, but that room especially. That was the heart of it.

A few seconds later, Ichigo pulled his hand back, and turned away from the room without opening the door. He continued his way back up the other side of the hallway, curiously pushing doors open to explore the new room’s interior.

As relief at Ichigo’s avoidance of his foster parents’ room seeped into the cracks of Grimmjow’s being, watched with renewed, albeit mild, amusement for a while more, than had a thought. Ichigo was so enthralled with the simple interior of a quiet, empty house, but Grimmjow could hardly stand being cooped up in the place. “Hey, Ichigo,” He called across the room as Ichigo flipped through the pages of a book he’d picked up; a collection of old Shakespearean plays that had sat on a shelf for as long as he’d lived there. He motioned for the smaller to follow him, and turned toward the front door, “How about we go walk around outside for a while?”

Unsurprisingly, Ichigo seemed thrilled at the idea. He’d never been outside before.

Tugging shoes on, Grimmjow unlocked the front door and pulled it open. A little belatedly, as he stepped through the doorway, he looked back to see that somewhere in that short span of moments, Ichigo had ended up with shoes too. A small frown tugged at his brows, but then, Ichigo wasn’t real yet, so he supposed maybe the creation could still pull off a few tricks from his own realm, wherever that had been.

They walked down the length of the drive, then took a left to head down the sidewalk side by side. Dew clung to the grass and the air still vaguely held a coolness from the night before but the sun was out, nearing the halfway point of the day. The few clouds that drifted above them were dark and pregnant, promising rain to come, but they were still distant. They’d have a few hours at least.

As they passed a neighbor’s house, a dog barked in annoying, yappy little sounds of aggression. At his side, Ichigo jolted in surprise, his head whipping around to find the source of the sound. Grimmjow chuckled, “Don’t worry. That tiny thing couldn’t hurt you if even if it really wanted to. It just likes to act tough.”

“Oh…” Ichigo looked down at the tiny monster as it jumped against the waist height fence keeping it in.

From further in the yard, a middle aged woman looked up from where she’d been tending her flower beds and waved, “Good morning, Grimmjow!”

“Morning, Ms. Unohana.” Grimmjow lifted a hand and dropped it back to his side in a quick, barely there wave.

“Shouldn’t you be in school today?”

“Uh, yeah, but I wasn’t feeling well this morning…” Blue eyes cornered away from the woman to glance at Ichigo. The orange haired boy still curiously looked down at the dog that looked back up at him, front paws planted on the fence and little black nose wiggling as it sniffed. “You can pet it.” He told his new friend quietly, nudging him a bit.

Ichigo looked over at him, then smiled and leaned over the short fence to extend a hand down to the dog. It wagged its tail and licked Ichigo’s fingers. Grimmjow smiled when Ichigo laughed.

“Not feeling well?” The neighbor asked, brushing her hands off as she stood, “Then what are you doing out here? You should be back inside resting.”

Grimmjow shrugged, still looking more toward the dog and Ichigo than at the woman. “Decided we needed some fresh air, I guess.”

The woman smiled and laughed a soft sound, “Just don’t get caught in the rain,” She cautioned with good nature as she calmly crossed her yard. She glanced at her dog, watching as it hopped excitedly on its back legs, little front paws dancing against the fence. Its tail waggled with enough energy to make its entire back half wiggle while it looked up at the boy. She shook her head and sighed, “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He acts like he’s never met you before.”

A slight frown creased Grimmjow’s brow as he glanced down at the dog, than at Ichigo.

Ichigo straightened away from the animal and looked at the lady with slightly widened eyes, than turned to look over his shoulder at where his friend stood behind him. “…I don’t think she can see me yet…” He half whispered.

“Oh…” Blue brows arched slightly, before he yanked his gaze back towards Unohana. “Um, yeah, well… I guess it’s probably been a while since I stopped long enough for him to notice me.”

The woman laughed and bent to pick up her pet, “He must have missed you.”

“Must have,” Grimmjow muttered, blue eyes cornering to glance at Ichigo again as he reached over the fence to pat the dog. It wagged its tail under the attention. “Uh. We- I’m going to finish my walk before it rains.”

“That’s a good idea. Hope you start to feel better soon.”

Grimmjow turned from his neighbor with a small nod of thanks and continued on his way. Ichigo hurriedly caught up, quietly walking at his side until they’d left the woman’s line of sight.

“I don’t know why she couldn’t see me…” He half whispered, like he was afraid someone would see Grimmjow and think him talking to himself. When he continued, it was with a downward tilt to his lips and a bit of disappointment in the tone of his voice, “I guess maybe it takes more than a day for me to be real.”

The young man shrugged as he walked and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. It didn’t much matter either way. The longer it took for Ichigo to be really real, the longer he had to put off telling his foster parents about his strange predicament. He couldn’t exactly hide another teenage boy in the house without someone noticing, but he guessed he could probably hide an imaginary one easy enough.

As they took their time in trailing down the sidewalk, Ichigo curiously looked around and took everything in. He paused at trees and ran his hands over the bark, the leaves. Took in the healthy, pretty greens and browns. Passing a flowerbed, the boy picked one and it just happened to be purple. He felt the softness of the petals, held it up to let light filter through and show the dark veins that grew in them. Then ended up handing it to Grimmjow to keep for him while he went off to look at other things.

Eventually they came to a little park area that had a small set of swings, a slide, a sandbox and a few other little things for kids to play on. Grimmjow took a seat in one of the swings, content enough to let Ichigo do his thing as he absently twirled the purple flower’s stem between his fingers.

As he stared at the spinning petals, a lively warmth rubbed against his shins and he flinched. Next came the purring and the hallucination of Ichigo’s creation earlier flashed in his mind. For a long minute, he refused to glance down at the animal apparently trying to get his attention.

It wasn’t until a forlorn, frustrated little yowl sounded from in front of where he sat that he blinked and finally looked down to find a real cat sitting in front of him. The poor thing had a torn, blood crusted ear and dirty, matted fur but when he held his hand out to it, it purred and rubbed against his fingers.

Settling his hand against something solid and alive and real, relief washed through him. Scratching under the mangy cat’s chin, he glanced up to see a speculative look on Ichigo’s features as the strange boy watched him.

The barely there upward slant to his lips disappeared and he frowned back, grunting a “what?” as he pet the stray.

“Nothing,” Ichigo shook his head slightly and wandered closer again. What he didn’t tell his new friend was that the striped tabby cat looked very much like the one he’d been thinking of while making things up during breakfast. But Ichigo was still fake and he couldn’t conjure things from his mind. He’d tried that first night while he’d sat in Grimmjow’s room, waiting for more cake and nothing had come to his call.

Brushing it off as a coincidence, he settled down crosslegged in front of Grimmjow’s swing and pulled the cat into his lap. It kneaded at his leg and rubbed its face against his chin as he gave it the attention it looked for. “We should name it.” Ichigo chirped happily.

Grimmjow grunted and smirked again, but shook his head, pushing his toes into the dirt to make the swing sway, “No, we shouldn’t. We can’t keep it.”

“Why not?” Boyish features dropped.

“I’m not allowed to have any animals in the house.”

“We could keep her outside, then!” Ichigo decided, and picked the cat up as he stood. With his motions, thunder rumbled in the distance and dark clouds began rolling in. He looked up at the sky, then back at Grimmjow and half whispered, “We could bring her inside tonight, and then put her back outside tomorrow after it’s done raining…”

Grimmjow shook his head again, rolling his eyes. “We can’t keep it. Isshin will skin me alive.” He took the cat from Ichigo’s arms and put it back on the ground, then turned to head back to the house. Ichigo pouted, glanced down at the cat, but trailed after the bigger teen.

The cat followed them all the way back, purring like the rumbling thunder in the distance.

Later that evening, as rain pelted the window and lightening flashed in the sky outside, Grimmjow scowled down at the animal curled up in the middle of his bed. “If it pisses all over my room, you have to clean it up.” He demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.

Ichigo sighed, hopping onto the bed to pet the purring cat, “Don’t be ridiculous. Cats only pee in litter boxes.”

“We don’t have a litter box.”

“Yes we do.” The imaginary boy pointed as Grimmjow started to deny it. He smiled a little when the protests died before they turned into words.

Grimmjow stared for a moment at the plastic box Ichigo had pointed to, where it was hidden under his desk, unable to figure out where it’d come from.

Ichigo chimed a sly, pleased, “You’re not so bad at this make believe stuff after all.” as the teen that had brought him to life manifested exactly what he’d said.

The angry thunder outside shook the windowpane and in the vibration, for just a moment, laughter could be heard.

 

* * *

 

**_Paradoxical Sleep - a recurring sleep state during which the brain is most active and dreaming occurs; a state of rapidly shifting eye movements during sleep. REM._ **


	3. Chapter 3

**_._ **

**_Hypnopompic Sleep - emotional and credulous dreaming cognition trying to make sense of real world stolidity; waking up._ **

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**_._ **

The calm night silence was shattered by the loud thud of something heavy and the sharp crack of breaking glass. Grimmjow jolted where he sat hunched over his desk, trying desperately to get some overdue homework done since he’d missed yet another day. He was on his feet and halfway across the room before he even realized the previously closed door was cracked open.

Ichigo was gone.

He’d made it most of the way down the staircase when the horrible yowl of a pained cat cut through the house.

His foster father had yet to come back from work, pulling another late shift to avoid his broken home, but his foster mother was there. The sound of the shower running reached him through the closed door, loud in the hushed quiet that settled after the cat’s fearful pronouncement. Grimmjow hoped she didn’t hear it as he scrambled the rest of the way down the stairs, skipped the last three steps, and cut the corner into the sitting room so fast he skidded on the carpet.

The glass was from a picture frame, the contents of which Grimmjow couldn’t place off the top of his head, though at the moment, it made no difference. The loud thud was the book that usually sat on the shelf next to the picture.

The cat, however, was his biggest concern; what was wrong with it, and why it and Ichigo were no longer locked in his room with him.

The animal growled a sound that could only ever come from a feline and then, as Grimmjow rounded on the sound, its paws touched down and it was dropped from where it’d been being held aloft by the scruff of its neck.

“What the hell–!” The cat tore through the house, fleeing as fast as it could from the room and away. The figure that had been holding the cat darted the other direction, lithe and fleet of foot. “Ichigo?! What are you doing?” Confused by the situation, Grimmjow glanced after the cat, then took off down the hallway after the apparition.

The door at the end of the hall, the one that led to his foster parents’ room, swayed on its hinges. Angry, both because the boy wasn’t listening and because he’d apparently decided keeping an eye on the cat meant chasing it and showing aggression towards it, Grimmjow stormed down the hall. His hand settled on the doorknob and he was just about to shove the door open, a glare on his features, when footsteps from behind caught his attention.

“…Grimmjow?” Ichigo peered at him from halfway down, a frown on his features. “You called for me? What’s-“

But Grimmjow missed whatever else he’d said, as he stared at Ichigo in confusion, then spun on his heel and flung the door wide. Within, shadows crept from the corners, from under the bed, thickening the air. A low, barely there laugh, a manic little giggle almost, floated through the dark. A flash of white teeth and gold eyes. Then he saw the thing turn and it was simply gone, vanished as if never there.

The air frozen in his lungs, Grimmjow stared.

A hand settled on his shoulder, light and almost careful, and he jolted, spinning around to back up against the frame of the doorway.

Ichigo looked up at him, his concern obvious.

“Did you see that?!” The bigger boy finally pushed out a tight breath, jerking his head around to study the gloom of the empty room. He reached around the door frame to flip the light switch, his intent to search the room, but the light didn’t come on.

“See what?” Ichigo asked, sidling up to him to peek around his larger form. Brown eyes scanned the empty room he’d skipped looking through earlier; a fairly large bed in the middle, a mirror and wardrobe on one side, an open door that led to a shallow walk-in closet. Though the space was unfamiliar, nothing seemed out of place.

“You didn’t see it?” Grimmjow took a tentative step into the dark room, paused, and changed his mind. With one last, hurried look around, he backed out of it instead, pulling the door shut as he did. “It was you… but not. I don’t know. I don’t know what it was, I thought it was you. It had the cat.”

“The cat?” Orange brows rose as the smaller turned to look over a shoulder, back toward the main part of the house.

Just then, a feminine voice gasped a surprised and shocked sound, before Mrs. Kurosaki called, “What happened?” She asked, directed at no one in particular as she saw the mess in the sitting room. “Grimmjow, do-“

A tentative meow reached the teen and Grimmjow cringed, looking at Ichigo, before he pushed passed him and hurried to the entry of the hallway, “It was raining,” He automatically started, feeding the woman his excuse and half covering for Ichigo. “and she looked so pitiful. I was going to put her back outside in the morning.”

The woman tisked an exasperated sound, “Oh, there’s glass everywhere- My picture…” She looked at cat, where the animal hesitated to crawl from behind the couch, “Did she knock this stuff off?” Masaki asked as she knelt and started pulling the bigger pieces of glass from the carpet, shaking her head. “It’s stopped raining. Make sure she didn’t cut herself, then get her back outside before Isshin gets home.”

Grimmjow nodded a slight motion, watching for a moment and thinking to clean up the mess himself, before he edged around the woman to grab the cat. He glanced back down the hall, to where Ichigo hovered out of sight, before he took the cat to the kitchen. After giving the animal a once over, searching for any harm done by the glass or by the fingers that had snagged against the back of her neck, he carried her out front, through the wet grass, and let her down by the sidewalk. She followed him clear back to the front door, meowing for attention.

By the time Grimmjow made it back to his room, Ichigo was waiting for him there, having somehow slipped past his foster mother where she knelt in the sitting room to clean broken glass and picture frame. He eyed the boy, then sighed, “I’m going to shower. Stay here this time.”

Ichigo frowned, “I didn’t-“ But he shook his head. They’d gone over this before, either Grimmjow believed him or he didn’t. He trailed behind the bigger teen, “What about the cat…?”

“She’ll be fine. It’s not raining anymore.”

“But what if she’s not fine? What if-“

Grimmjow turned on him, “She’ll be fine!” He said again in a growl, his patience thin. “She was an outside cat before you found her and she did just fine. I told you before you convinced me to bring her in that we couldn’t keep her. You can go outside when you want to see her.”

A scowl tugged at orange brows as Ichigo watched the taller turn again and walk off. He didn’t follow this time, backing back into the room to wait like his creator bid. Grimmjow showed him more about being real than the bigger teen realized. Sure, he’d taken Ichigo outside and showed him around the house and they even had breakfast together, but more importantly, Grimmjow showed the not-quite-there boy what emotion was, what frustration looked like, what anger felt like, what stress did to one’s head.

After his shower, Grimmjow once more returned to his room to again find Ichigo seated at the foot of his bed. He glanced at the boy and sighed a short breath as he began climbing into bed. After a moment of shifting about to get comfortable and settling in, he closed his eyes to sleep, but rolled over again with another sigh. “You don’t have to sit there all night. I have no idea if you need to sleep, but I’ll grab you a blanket, you can lay down or make yourself comfortable.” But as he shifted to get up and do just that, Ichigo seemed to light up a bit and, with part of the bed vacant enough to make room for him now, slipped into the bed beside his new friend.

Grimmjow blinked, then frowned at him, laying on his side as he faced the strange young man.

“Why are you making that face at me?” Ichigo asked, laying on his opposite side to face Grimmjow and stare right back.

The bigger boy frowned harder, “What face?”

But he wasn’t answered with an explanation. Instead, Ichigo mimicked the frown, furrowing his brow to match Grimmjow’s in a scowl that was both out of place and yet fitting on his handsome features. After a drawn out second, Grimmjow snorted in response and a smirk stole across Ichigo’s face, interrupting the scowl he’d forced.

Grimmjow’s frown broke a half second later and he scoffed to hide the smile trying to worm across his face, yanking the blanket over Ichigo’s head as he again shifted to get comfortable.

That next morning, he woke up to warmth pressed against his back and the lingering feel of cold fingers dragging across his skin. It took him a groggy second to separate his dreaming world from the real one and remember Ichigo had climbed into bed with him the night before. “-hands ‘re cold…” He rolled over with a grumbling sound of protest towards being awake and when he opened his eyes, for an instant he thought he saw a manic grin spread wide across Ichigo’s features. But as he blinked, it was gone and Ichigo blinked at him sleepily in return, no trace of derangement to be found.

The icy feeling of fingers closing around the back of his neck followed him the rest of the day. As he tried to sit through class, claws dug in against his spine and he flinched hard enough that his chair scraped against the floor and the teacher looked up at him.

After excusing himself, he fled to the bathroom, hand against the back of his neck and the warmth of blood seeping between his fingers. He got there and stood before the mirror above the sink to find nothing, not even a scratch. Blowing a harsh breath against his reflection, he started to turn, only to jerk back when he found a figure standing beside him, looking over at him.

“Fuck- Ichigo? What are you doing here? I told you to stay at the house.”

Ichigo eyed him critically for a moment, like he was trying to see what Grimmjow was seeing -or thought he should have been seeing. Then he pulled his attention away to glance around the space. “I was bored. How am I supposed to entertain myself while you’re gone?”

“I don’t know, play pretend or something. Go find the cat to play with.”

Ichigo rolled his eyes, “How old do you think I am? Five? Besides, I can’t do that anymore, I tried the first night.”

“Well I can’t keep you entertained 24/7. I need to pass this class and I need to be here to do that.”

“Why can’t I just come with you? I wont bother anyone and it’ll be good for me to see more of being real.” Ichigo nodded his head a bit, like he was trying to sell the idea but Grimmjow looked at him like he was crazy instead.

“You can’t just sit around in a class you’re not enrolled in, it doesn’t work that way. You have to be a part of that class to be in it during class hours.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, that’s just how it works. Now go back and wait until I get out of class.” Grimmjow started to push passed his odd new friend, shouldering the bathroom door open and peeking both ways down the hall before taking a left, headed back toward the room he’d fled. He glanced up at a clock mounted in the hall. Class would be over in a few minutes, but he still had a couple more to go before the day was over.

Skipping the door to his room entirely, he went to his locker instead. The bell rang and people flooded the halls, parting like waves as they pushed passed him but didn’t actually cross that border into his space.

After a few minutes of digging books and his half done homework from his locker, it slowly began to occur to him that not a single person had so much as glanced in Ichigo’s direction. He turned, slamming the locker shut behind him so that it echoed in the hallway. A few kids closest to him jumped and looked over and he watched them carefully, before he ducked his head, nudging Ichigo on his way by. “They still can’t even see you yet, can they? Push that kid.”

Ichigo turned a sharp look on the bigger teen, “What? Why would I-“

But before he could question further, Grimmjow pushed against Ichigo’s shoulder and pushed him right into a random boy walking past them. Ichigo half stumbled into the kid, turning a shocked look on Grimmjow, simultaneously trying to right himself and apologize to the person he’d collided with.

The kid didn’t even look at Ichigo. He turned a confused, offended glare on Grimmjow, like he hadn’t even felt an entire body falling against him and saw and felt only Grimmjow. Grimmjow sneered back, his features hard enough to raise brows and send the kid on his way.

After a moment, he reached out and snagged Ichigo’s arm, tugging him up and along, “Come on. You can sit in class with me if you want, but stay quiet.”

The odd creeping of cold fingers vanished.

When the day began winding down and school let out, Grimmjow skipped taking the bus in favor of walking home with Ichigo at his side. The weather from the previous day had blown through, leaving a tolerable temperature and the freshness that came after rain. They took their time, cutting through the park where they’d found the cat. She was no where to be seen and Ichigo cheerfully decided that she was probably hanging around the Kurosaki house waiting for them. Grimmjow grunted and hoped not, lest Isshin find out about having the animal inside.

They hit the last stretch of sidewalk that led to Grimmjow’s house and Ichigo faltered in his steps. Grimmjow glanced over to see a frown on his brow. “What?”

“…I don’t know. I just thought… It felt like there was something over there.” He pointed toward the side of the house where the shadows were the deepest, near the stairs that led up to the small porch and front door.

At their right, the neighbor’s dog cowered in its fenced in yard, growling at them like it was trying to ward off something dangerous. Grimmjow frowned at it, before looking back toward the house. Brilliant purple flowers bloomed in the flowerbed lining the front of the house. For an instant, the roots seemed to writhe across the top of the soil, painted red as they drank from half rotted gore.

Grimmjow pushed on, forcing himself into motion as he told himself that he was seeing things again.

Except that, as they neared, the blood and guts strewn across the ground didn’t go anywhere. Flies were beginning to collect along the foul remnants. Grimmjow swallowed harshly, staring at the mess and waiting for it to disappear with each blink, but it didn’t.

At his side, Ichigo breathed, “You’re not seeing things this time.”

Smeared across the front door, a bright red smile had been finger-painted, the mouth overly larger to make the normally benign expression look sick and crazed. The door was partially ajar and he was almost afraid to push it the rest of the way open and see what waited for him, but he heard movement within and flung it open to see both his foster parents standing in the kitchen, having turned to watch him when he entered. Something that might have bordered on relief flashed across Masaki’s features. Isshin’s were pulled into hard, unreadable lines. There was a phone in his hand, raised halfway to his ear, but he pushed disconnect and set it aside when it registered who it was in their doorway.

“What-“

But before Grimmjow could further his question, Isshin’s commanding tone cut him off. “Grimmjow. Where the hell have you been?”  His wife started to reach out, like she would lay a hand on her husband’s arm and try to calm him, but her touch fell short.

“At school,” Grimmjow answered, like it was obvious, shaking his head in confusion. “What’s going on?”

“At school?” Isshin continued, looking furious, “Then why did I have to leave work because the principal called to tell us you didn’t show up for attendance during your last two classes and no one knew where you were? One of the teachers said you excused yourself to the bathroom looking sick and no one’s seen you since. And now there’s a dead cat _scattered_ in my yard! A cat that you apparently had last night. Are you sure you want to use that as your excuse? That you were at school?”

Blue eyes widened at the accusation, darting over to where Ichigo stood looking just as shocked, but of course Ichigo couldn’t defend him. He wasn’t real yet and no one could see him. “I didn’t- That wasn’t me! I was at school, I-“

“Then what were you doing after you left school? It’s an hour and half after your school lets out and you didn’t take the bus today or you would have been back an hour ago.”

Leave it to Isshin, the doctor, to be clinical and precise. All Grimmjow could do was shake his head, “I walked, I wasn’t feeling well, I-“ But now it was starting to sound like excuses, even to him, “I stayed home sick yesterday and the bus wasn’t agreeing with me.”

At the older man’s side, Masaki frowned at her foster son, but finally dropped that placating hand on her husband’s arm, “Isshin… He brought the cat in to get her out of the rain, I doubt-”

“That doesn’t explain where he was when he should have been at school.” Isshin snapped, then turned back to Grimmjow, still furious, “If you were so sick, you should have come by the clinic, or you should have been here and maybe there wouldn’t be a dead cat in my grass.” He raised a hand, pointing for emphasis. Grimmjow flinched. “Clean it up before I call the cops.”

“I didn’t kill the cat!” But what was he supposed to do? So, with nothing left to say and nothing to argue and unwilling to push the man’s temper further, he shrugged back through the front door, yanking it closed on his way out. He could hear arguing start up almost as soon as the door was shut and in the muffled words and angry tones, he thought he heard the echo of laughter.

Ichigo watched him and he glared back, “Tch. I didn’t–!”

“I believe you.” The imaginary boy said, quiet but sincere as he met the indignant, simmering fury in the blue eyes drilling into his. He watched some of it drain, watched that fire ice over, before Grimmjow nodded and turned away without a word to begin scrubbing drying gore from the front door.

It was only after he’d fetched a bucket and rag from the garage, as he started wiping away the grotesque smile that it dawned on him where it’d come from. “It was _him_ …”

“Who? Your fake dad?”

“No,” Grimmjow shook his head, staring at the darkening red of the smile smeared in front of him. “The other one, the thing that looks like you but isn’t you. He was here yesterday, tormenting the cat before I put her back outside…” Absently reaching up, he rubbed at the back of his neck, where invisible claw marks burned against his skin like welts. “I know you keep saying I’m just seeing things, but I’m starting to think he’s as real as you are.”

It took him hours to scrub the mess clean and pick through what was mixed in with the flowers. When he was done, he itched like an accusation, like the drying bits of blood under his nails had been there all along or the soft tufts of fur had passed through his fingers first.

He skipped dinner entirely that evening, retreating straight to his room the moment he’d cleaned himself up. He left the bucket of bloodied, disgusting water sit in the garage next to Isshin’s car.

That night, he fell asleep with Ichigo pressed against his back again and somewhere in his dreams, the warmth of body heat chilled until cold seeped through to his bones. He dreamt of the creature running around his house, dreamt that it turned away from his kneeling foster parents where they begged for it to spare them in the middle of the sitting room. Sickly golden eyes coasted up the staircase, to the closed door of the bedroom that wasn’t really his. Laying in bed shivering, he listened to the creak of footsteps, slow and deliberate like they’d been pulled straight from a horror movie. The knob twisted and the air froze in Grimmjow’s lungs as he watched, waiting for it to come through.

Ichigo didn’t really know why he was standing in the hallway at the top of the stairs. He didn’t even remember leaving the bedroom, or even climbing from the bed. But he turned and threw the door open again, scrambling into the room as he felt a shock wave of terror and pain rip through the air. The door banged against the wall as it was flung but it made not a sound. What stared back at him froze him in his tracks and sent ice through his veins.

There, hovering at the bedside, the creature Grimmjow had described from his nightmares stood staring back. A colorless mirror of Ichigo. Its features twisted with a wicked, ill boding grin. Eyes like twin pools of fire-melted gold shone in the darkness and black nails trailed almost fondly down the side of Grimmjow’s terror contorted features. There was something lecherous, something dark and unclean in that touch. With each twitch of movement, Grimmjow seemed to flinch away, still locked deep in his dreams of shadows and red.

The ice in his veins was followed by heat and anger. For reasons he wasn’t even sure of, Ichigo knew he needed to get rid of this thing. It was a monster, an abomination, a manifestation of all the things Grimmjow had been hallucinating. It was unhealthy and corrosive and it had already planted its roots deep in Grimmjow’s mind and now it nurtured what grew and blossomed there.

Boyish features twisted with outrage, hardened into something threatening. As Ichigo glared death at the creature and made a lunge for it -anything to make it quit touching the disgruntled, sleeping teen- the monster laughed a sharp, amused sound.

The laughter echoed through the room and rang through Grimmjow’s skull. In his dreams, that crazed laughter cut a white-hot swath through the horrible scene he found himself a part of. He jerked awake, bolted upright with a startled sound and scrambled backward in his bed until his back hit the wall.

Just before Ichigo’s hands could close upon the creature, Grimmjow woke up and it was gone, leaving nothing behind but a ringing in his ears that sounded much too similar to that laugh. Having been attacking with the intent to harm the thing, when it was suddenly gone, Ichigo stumbled. Before he’d even fully caught his balance, he spun in a swift circle, brown eyes wide and searching. The room was dark around him.

Then his searching gaze landed on Grimmjow where the young man huddled upon his bed, breathing hard and terrified. The blue eyes trained in his direction didn’t see him though. Grimmjow stared at where the monster had been crouching, like he could still see a white afterimage behind every blink.

“Grimmjow-!” Ichigo scrambled forward, onto the bed. “Grimmjow,” He crawled across the mattress, grabbed Grimmjow’s arm, then his chin, and forced the bigger teen to look at him. “I saw it, Grimmjow, I saw it too.”

Wide, blue eyes darted to him. Big hands fisted in Ichigo’s shirt, clenched tight enough to whiten the knuckles under golden skin. “You saw it this time too…” Grimmjow rasped out, his voice low and maybe a little shaky.

Ichigo nodded a single, grave motion.

“It’s real…” Grimmjow swallowed, his eyes jerking away from Ichigo’s to pan around the room again, no doubt searching out the creature he’d through had been from his dreams.

“I-I don’t know…” Ichigo shook his head, mind racing. “I don’t know, I think…it’s like me. I think, if you don’t kill it, it will be real.”

For the rest of that night, Grimmjow didn’t dare sleep, paranoid the thing that wasn’t Ichigo would come back. Every little sound in dark, every little creak of the house or gust of wind from outside had him on edge. All this time he’d been assuring himself it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real, but then suddenly it was. The gross things he’d been seeing were coming to true and so was the monster lurking the shadows of his mind. All of it was starting to be real, all of it except Ichigo.

Around dawn, as he leaned against the wall behind his bed with his knees pulled up, Grimmjow asked, “Ichigo? Why aren’t you real yet?”

Ichigo didn’t have an answer for him.

That next day was a blur, but not because it went by quickly. He’d already been sleeping poorly for the better part of the week; awakened regularly by nightmares that he suddenly wasn’t so sure were completely in his head.

He refused to sleep that night, too, and wasted the dark hours away by walking circuits through the house after his foster parents went to bed. Ichigo trailed behind him, worried.

“What are you doing, Grimmjow…?”

“What if it comes back while everyone’s asleep?”

But there was no way of avoiding anything for long. Eventually sleep was unavoidable too. In the night, just before dawn as the skyline lit up red and orange and gold, it came back.

His faster father was the first to meet a bloody end, where he’d passed out on the couch after pulling a long shift and drinking himself numb. He choked on the blood filling his mouth. Still more dribbled down the curve of his gut, staining the couch and filling the room with the smell of copper as he struggled to right himself. He ended up on his knees, bowed in front of the couch as his wife rushed to his side, confused.

There was no screaming. Finally, after all the years, there was no yelling or arguing. There was only pleading. They pleaded with the killer in their home, begged for their lives as they tried to reason with a thing beyond reason. In the dark of night, red sprayed across the walls, soaked into the carpet. Gold flashed behind it and under the labored breaths and weak words, laughter could be found.

Grimmjow bolted upright in his bed with a gasp, chest heaving. His hands itched and the room smelled like blood. “Ichigo?” As he climbed from red smeared sheets, he searched for the boy. The shadows were uninterrupted.

Terrified of what he’d find, he fled the room and tiptoed down the stairs. His hand was a white-knuckled vice on the railing and the carpet at the base of the staircase was sticky below his bare feet.

“It has to be a dream,” He told himself, “It’s not real.” Over and over, whispered in a voice that he hardly recognized as his own, but with each word, he could taste the smell in the air and Ichigo wasn’t there to tell him he was seeing things again.

Sirens filled the silence, cutting in and out, around and around in a wailing cacophony of unbearably loud and too quiet to hear. Flashing, colorful lights followed, playing off the buildings and the street, lighting up the windows of the quiet, little house at the end of the drive.

“It- It wasn’t me…” There was blood on his hands, his arms. It pattered across his features, bright red against his bloodless face. Ichigo was gone. He couldn’t find the boy, he’d been searching, but he couldn’t find him. His foster parents lay scattered through the home, what was left of them, anyway; the wife on the bed in the master bedroom, the husband on the floor in front of the couch and everywhere between. Two bowls sat on the kitchen table. Grimmjow couldn’t look at them, couldn’t confirm the taste in his mouth.

“I didn’t… This wasn’t me, there’s someone else in the house!” But he was having a hard time concentrating on what he was saying. The sirens echoed in his skull and in their lee, when they were at their quietest, he heard laughter. There was something in his hand. It cut like glass.

The blood itched up and down his arms.

He stared at the house as cops dragged him through the front yard, shouting at him and to each other and he had no idea what they were saying. More of them were flooding into the house, hesitating at the doorway when the smell reached them. He couldn’t see through the window that faced the street. It was streaked red with grotesque things, like a child had gotten ahold of too much finger paint.

With more force than necessary, his arms were wrenched behind his back and the metal of the cuffs was cold against the hotness of the blood drying on his skin. He clenched his fist tighter and felt paper crinkle between his fingers.

“–like a picture.” He heard someone say, as his knees hit the wet grass. “Evidence’ll take it from him when we get him back.”

Grimmjow was pushed into the backseat of a cop car, the door slammed shut behind him. The hard plastic of the seat was slick and it took him a moment to right himself, too busy trying to argue that there was still someone -or something- in the house. He could hear the growl of his voice, but for the life of him, he couldn’t hear what he was actually saying, if there was words in it at all.

The car shifted into drive and pulled away from the curb. Grimmjow watched the house he’d lived in grow smaller, the darkness around it lit up by red and blue. A voice in the back of his mind whispered; ‘ _Red and blue make purple. It’s his favorite._ ’ Then, as the sirens again fell away, he heard the snicker of hushed laughter and he looked over to see that white grin and white hair and gold eyes, all splashed in dark, purple-black shadows.

The creature smiled where it sat in the seat next him, not a drop of red staining its flawlessly pale skin. It pulled a hand up, where Grimmjow could see it and the boy automatically flinched back, eyes wide and breathing ragged- he was awake! He was awake and this wasn’t a dream…why could he still see it? -as he stared.

His fisted hand, where it was trapped behind his back, was suddenly empty and Grimmjow looked down to see the picture that had been tossed into his lap, smeared in red that matched his fingerprints; an old photo of a little boy with bright orange hair, big brown eyes, and a happy smile.

The name on the back read Ichigo.

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**_Imaginary - unreal; existing only in the mind._ **

**Author's Note:**

> Feed me your thoughts, if you would! I thrive on your theories and ideas. Thank you~


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